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Anxiety, EMDR Therapy, Step 6, and Disability

I have still be struggling with anxiety. It is the worst in the evenings.

Sometimes it’s bad when I am in town and trying to avoid buying alcohol. Sometimes the cravings are too great to deal with.

I think about my brother a lot, but I don’t have emotion about him. This has caused a lot of issues.

I started seeing a new counselor yesterday. I can already tell that she’s going to be an excellent fit for me. She is licensed, which is different from my previous counselor. She has years of experience. She is confident in what she does. She’s empathetic.

Eventually she is going to do EMDR therapy with me. She wants to wait a little while, though. She wants to get to know my story more and for me to learn to trust her.

Her biggest goal before hand is to help me learn to love myself.

I have a lot to work through with this because I was bullied terribly in elementary through junior high (physically and mentally/emotionally). I struggle with friendship because I feel that I annoy everyone and they’re just being nice when they say nice things… I feel that they don’t really mean it. I tend to make everything about me because of my social anxiety, and I have a hard time with community gatherings because of all of this.

Apparently EMDR is very intense. What is does is helps bring both sides of the brain together… the logical side (left brain) with the emotional side (right brain). I am very logical about Joey’s death. I can talk about it without any emotion. She’s going to help me start to feel emotion about his death, which is going to be rough.

I am also going to work through the bullying I experienced.

I have some abuse that I will work through as a pre-schooler, but I don’t want to share that with a public audience. It’s very personal.

She met with me for about 45 minutes, and it was supposed to only be 15 minutes. She didn’t charge me for this appointment. Upcoming appointments are pretty inexpensive, which really helps as well.

After discussing my mental illnesses and alcoholism, my brother’s death, bullying as a child/teen, and the abuse that I went through, she said that we have so much to work through. She seemed hopeful, though, which made me hopeful. She thinks EMDR will really help my anxiety and fear.

I’ve been working on my AA Step 6, which is going through my character defects. I have taken my perfectionism trait and broken it down into positives and negatives. Through this I’ve realized that my perfectionism is what makes it difficult for me to work. When things aren’t perfect (which they never are), I make change after change and it causes me severe anxiety and panic attacks. It drove me to drink a lot. Same thing happened when I homeschooled. When things weren’t perfect (which they never are), I made change after change with curriculum and had severe anxiety. This also drove me to drink a lot.

I’m wondering if once I work through this, maybe I can work again one day. My case manager told me over and over again that she didn’t see a disabled person when she looked at me and talked with me. She sees someone who can and will work through my anxieties and maybe I can at least work part time. I know I can’t teach full time again, but maybe I can sub or something at the kids’ school. That would help us so much financially, and it would allow me to be in a classroom again without all the stress of the planning, grading, etc.

On another note, I’m thinking about writing a book. I have no idea where to start, but it has been something that has been on my mind and heart for a long time. I have so much in my brain that I want to get out. Even if it never publishes… I just want to get it all out.